MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Puebla Group supports CFK at Buenos Aires gathering

“If we have to fight against drug trafficking, first we have to fight against the financial system that launders drug money,” CFK noted

The Puebla Group Tuesday expressed its support to Argentine Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (CFK) during a convention at Buenos Aires' Centro Cultural Kirchner (CCK).

The forum bringing together progressive leaders from Latin America and Spain spoke of “judicial harassment” against CFK during a gathering under the title “Popular will and democracy: From the military party to the judicial party, threats to democracy.

Former Colombian President Ernesto Samper commented that ”lawfare” (judicial war) against progressive leaders stemmed from the “same movie, staged from the United States”.

“Since 1975, when they saw that they could no longer intervene with the marines in our countries, that they could no longer improvise military juntas to torture civilians, they designed a judicial system,” he explained.

Samper also pointed out that there was a “terrifying alliance” between economic and communication groups that generate false news aimed at “blocking the social progress of these countries.”

In her own appearance before the Group, CFK added that lawfare “cannot be explained without the media” because “sentences are written in the media and then a judge or prosecutor signs them.” The former president also said lawfare targeted politics that favor “income distribution and upward social mobility”.

“Everything suffered in Argentina has to do with what happens in the economy,” CFK stressed. The March 24, 1976, coup d'état “destroyed the accumulation pattern that had been achieved up to that moment,” she also explained. It “was not only economic but also cultural,” she said.

“Progressive governments will never be forgiven for the reconstruction of the economy and also what we were able to build in terms of human rights, especially in Argentina since the beginning of Néstor Kirchner's government,” she added.

“With Néstor began the reconstruction of Argentina and the reconstruction of Memory, Truth, and Justice. [Former dictator Gen. Jorge Rafael] Videla used to say that his worst era had arrived with the Kirchners,” she went on.

Regarding former President Mauricio Macri, CFK explained that the “new wave of neoliberalism that started in December 2015 in Argentina, began to build the theory of 'they took everything' and that they had to contract debt to pay the debt they received. In 2015 there was no debt, neither of companies, nor of the State, nor families,” she insisted.

Argentina had been disentangled from the International Monetary Fund, plus “there were reserves in the Central Bank and real wages were not lagging,” the current Vice President also underlined.

“They took the GDP with the IMF and we still do not know where it is. From the macrismo, they came to convince [voters] that everything that had been achieved was the product of leaders who were corrupt and had stolen, and added that the lawfare aims not only to re-impose an economic model but to discipline the leaders of the national and popular camp,” CFK highlighted.

“This neoliberalism allowed the entry of the other great drama which is drug trafficking. If we have to fight against drug trafficking, first we have to fight against the financial system that launders drug money,” she also noted.

“It is necessary to recover a judicial system to face the dramas of our times and to build again the country we once had with a democratic and constitutional State. I am not interested in whether I will be convicted, disenfranchised, or imprisoned. I am interested in building again a democratic and constitutional State in which guarantees are not painted cardboard. I am interested in building again the country we once had, as Peronism did in the last century,” CFK concluded.

Also attending the event were former Presidents Evo Morales (Bolivia), and Rafael Correa (Ecuador), in addition to Samper. Also joining them was former Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (Spain).

Puebla Group founder Marco Enríquez-Ominami of Chile said all center-right political leaders were “arming themselves against the Puebla Group.” He suggested “a debate of ideas” instead.